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Monday, March 26, 2012

Kids, Speech and Learning

Over the Christmas break Caden developed a bit of a stutter and was straining to start his sentences. Umming was also a prevalent feature in his vocabulary.

He has also had some trouble with pronunciations of some words but never to the extent that we were faced with during December and January. Since starting school we have seen some improvement in both the stuttering and the pronunciations of his words and he has been doing really well.

After speaking with several people in the know, his stuttering has now been put down to nerves about starting school. But that hasn't stopped us from working with him on a daily basis to aide his speech.

Here are a few things we have been doing:

Singing Nursery Rhymes- Many nursery rhymes feature heavily on repetition. This helps by getting children familiar with the sounds of the letters and also how the sounds feel when they are saying them.
For example the Peter Piper nursery rhyme is a favourite around here and it focuses heavily on the p and the k sounds which both use different parts of the mouth and tongue to say them. You will find the same thing happening in many nursery rhymes.Reading- Simply reading to children helps aide in speech and development. This was a key thing both his teacher and our doctor wanted us to focus on. Sing-a-longs- Do you remember the song Skip to My Lou? Well it is a great one for kids to use to learn the letters of the alphabet and also the sounds they make. I know Caden has fun singing this one.

Something we have tried to steer clear of was anything to structured and just tried to incorporate it into our daily life. So no flash cards etc.

Please remember that I am in no way a expert. I am just a parent who has found these things helpful when working with my son.

If you are looking for some tips from someone who knows what they are doing then I can recommend here. I only recently found this blog and I only wish I found it sooner.

Do any of your children have trouble with their speech? What have you found has helped them?

1 comment
:

Anyway.. One of my beautiful sons developed a stutter and was 'blocking' when he was about 4 or 5. We were referred to a speech pathologist who after assessing JD as a severe stutterer started us on a program, called the Lidcombe program and was based around the Mr Men books Mr Bump. We had a workbook that had a Mr Bump story relating to bumpy speaking. It is a behaviour modification program and is based on positive reinforcement.Very basically if he was talking and he stuttered we would simply say "that word was a bit bumpy' lets try again." When he would speak 'smoothly' we would praise his smooth talking. The results were amazing and, for us, instant. JD is now 15 and he can't even remember the times he stuttered but we do have a lovely little collection of Mr Bump from over the years. Good luck with Caden.